It is too soon to predict the fate of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) or, as we call it, TrumpRyanCare. But, the AHCA as currently proposed retains many key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The apparent willingness of Republicans to retain these provisions represents a significant statement about the lasting effects of Obamacare.

Efforts to replace and repeal the Affordable Care Act will have the greatest effect on those under 65 - but may also have a significant impact of people covered by Medicare. Specifically, if the AC is repealed your cost of prescription drugs may go up. Here how Medicare beneficiaries may be impacted by an ACA repeal.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) sought to provide increased access to health insurance with two different sets of provisions – those impacting “market” access (“If I apply for a policy, can I get one?”) and others focused on “financial” access (“Can I afford a policy?”). This blog post will describe how Trump/RyanCare is likely to treat the market access provisions of ACA differently than the financial access provisions - and how different groups will be affected.

I have described the likelihood that, in a post-ACA world, the federal government will step back and the states will have more flexibility and responsibility. The next key player in this equation is the insurance industry.

In my previous post I discussed how the federal role in U.S. healthcare markets is likely to shrink in a post-ACA environment. So, who picks up the slack? It is likely that the largest increases in role/autonomy will go to individual states and insurance companies. This blog post focuses on a potential increase in states’ roles; my next post discusses increased control that may flow to insurance companies. Here’s how this may play out: